Tag: Presidential Pardons

Categories
Capitol Insurrection Donald Trump U.S. Senate

MTG Viciously Attacks Lindsey Graham After He Criticizes Trump’s Idea Of Pardoning Jan. 6 Conspirators

Once again, failed, one-term former President Donald Trump has set members of the GOP against one another, which could prove fatal to Republicans as they try to unify their party and win the 2022 midterm elections.

This time, Trump has Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) lashing out at Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) over remarks the ex-president made Saturday evening during a rally in Conroe, Texas.

Specifically, Trump hinted he might just issue presidential pardons to those who have been charged with taking part in the January 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol:

“Another thing we’ll do — and so many people have been asking me about it — if I run and if I win, we will treat those people from January 6 fairly. We will treat them fairly,” he said at a rally in Conroe, Texas. “And if it requires pardons, we will give them pardons. Because they are being treated so unfairly.”

That didn’t sit well with Graham, who pushed back at Trump on Sunday, according to Newsweek:

“I don’t want to send any signal that it was OK to defile the Capitol. There are other groups with causes that may want to go down to the violent path that these people get pardoned.”

Graham’s remarks set Greene off on a tangent which she posted on the Telegram social media app:

“Lindsey Graham has done nothing about J6 (Jan. 6).

“I guess Lindsey Graham doesn’t care about being presumed innocent until proven guilty. Americans are being treated worst than Islamic terrorists at Gitmo and Lindsey Graham doesn’t care. He doesn’t care about their due process rights. He doesn’t care that they haven’t seen their families and are denied seeing their attorneys most of the time. He doesn’t care that these pretrial J6 defendants are denied hair cuts, shaving, chapel, and the most basic of human rights. He doesn’t care that they are abused in the DC jail because they are white, male, and voted for the very President that he supposedly supports.”

The Georgia Republican then added this to her screed:

“While no one agrees with the violence and riot at the Capitol on J6, Lindsey Graham would rather see pretrial J6 defendants be abused and forgotten just like Nancy Pelosi wants them abused and forgotten. Instead of actually doing something about the great injustice happening to pretrial Americans awaiting their day in court, Lindsey Graham turns his head to their abuse, votes for Joe Biden’s nominees, votes for Joe Biden’s Infrastructure bill, and then pretends to be a friend to President Trump. Aren’t we all sick and tired of those kind of ‘friends.'”

Be sure and note the line “While no one agrees with the violence and riot at the Captiol on J6…” However, Greene does indeed agree with that took place, and has made that clear on multiple occasions. She is also suspected of having played a part in what transpired on that horrific day.

The good news is that if Republicans are sniping at each other, it weakens them. Leave it to Trump to set off a civil war inside the GOP.

Categories
Crime The Trump Adminstration

Steve Bannon’s Legal Problems Have Gone From Bad To Worse

When Donald Trump handed him a presidential pardon in the final days of the Trump administration, Steve Bannon probably thought he was in the clear legally and could stop worrying about being sent to prison.

But Bannon was very wrong.

 

The Washington Post reports that federal prosecutors are refusing to erase his indictment for fraud:

“The U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan, which is preparing for trial against three of Bannon’s co-defendants in an alleged border wall fundraising scam, is seeking an ‘administrative’ termination of Bannon’s case, which would halt the prosecution against him for good but would not clear his name from the docket. The case would officially remain pending while the others, who were not pardoned by Trump before he left office in January, await trial.”

That’s not the only legal jeopardy Bannon finds himself in, as Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. is also considering whether or not he’ll seek an indictment against the former White House aide for his scheme to embezzle money from his failed “Build the Wall” scheme which turned out to be nothing but a con job:

“Following Bannon’s pardon, which covers only federal charges, the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office began its own investigation of the alleged scam, raising the possibility that Bannon could face state fraud charges. If his case remains open in federal court, it is not expected to affect the ability of state prosecutors to file charges.”

Could Bannon be facing charges in both federal and state court? He most certainly could, and since he and his attorneys are likely to litigate the federal case against him in light of his pardon from Trump, the chances increase that if he’s found guilty, Bannon could be serving his time at Attica or Sing Sing, two of the most infamous prisons in the country.

Bannon probably thought being connected to and working for Donald Trump would bring him fame and fortune. Instead, it has resulted in him facing the prospect of spending a large portion of what remains of his life incarcerated.

 

Categories
Donald Trump The Trump Adminstration

Trump Messed Up Some Of His Pardons – And The Recipients Can Still Be Prosecuted

In the final days of his administration, Donald Trump handed out 74 pardons and commuted the sentences of 70 others who had been convicted and sentenced to federal prison.

NBC News notes that many of those who received pardons from Trump were close friends, former associates, or people he believed would somehow endear him to the rich assholes he’s known to hang out with at Mar-a-Lago:

“A list of 143 people included his former chief strategist and longtime ally Steve Bannon as well as his former top fundraiser Elliott Broidy. Then, with less than an hour to go before President-elect Joe Biden was set to be sworn in, Trump granted one last pardon: to Albert J. Pirro, Jr., the ex-husband of Fox News host and longtime ally Jeanine Pirro.”

But some of those pardons were so narrowly constructed and written that they leave the recipients open to prosecution by the Justice Department and Attorney General Merrick Garland.

Former Mueller investigation chief prosecutor Andrew Weissmann spelled out the mistakes Trump made in the pardons of two individuals, longtime Trump friend and confidant Roger Stone and Trump’s 2016 campaign manager, Paul Manafort, in an article he wrote for Just Security:

“The pardon for Paul Manafort (on Dec. 23, 2020), is illustrative. By its own terms, the pardon covers only the crimes “for his conviction” on specific charges and not any other crimes (charged or uncharged). Specifically, the pardon is solely for the crimes of conviction — eight in the Eastern District of Virginia and two in the District of Columbia. That leaves numerous crimes as to which Manafort can still be prosecuted, as in Virginia there were 10 hung counts. In Washington, the situation is even more wide open. In that district, Manafort pleaded to a superseding information containing two conspiracy charges, while the entire underlying indictment — containing numerous crimes from money laundering, to witness tampering, to violation of the Foreign Agents Registration Act — now remains open to prosecution as there was no conviction for those charges.”

And then we have Roger Stone and a rouges gallery of other criminals:

“Manafort is not the only example of narrow Trump pardons that may be rectified by the incoming Attorney General. The same narrow pardons were provided to Special Counsel Office defendants Roger Stone (Dec. 23, 2020), George Papadopoulos (Dec. 22, 2020), and Alex van den Zwaan (Dec. 22, 2020), as well as the myriad other felons who received pardons or commutations on December 22 and 23, 2020. As noted, these defendants include murderers, corrupt politicians and law enforcement officers, and Philip Esformes, the single largest health care fraudster in history. These windows of opportunity are due in significant part to a practice followed by prosecutors’ offices across the country: permitting defendants to plead to some, but not all, of their crimes. That feature of these cases should now redound to the benefit of the government, as it may now permit the Department to see that justice is done.”

All of these people can be tried and convicted once again, and this time they won’t be getting a presidential pardon, so they’ll have to serve all of their sentences without the promise of a get-out-of-jail free card waiting for them if they agree to not testify against Trump.

As with everything he does, Donald Trump failed. He wanted to provide protection to those who didn’t testify against him, but all he did was make it more likely they’ll wind up in prison for much longer than they anticipated.